Why are some processes in “trees”, but others aren't?

[Coldblackice]

In a program that shows process tree layouts, like Process Explorer, I see that some programs are "floating", apparently not tied to any tree. How is this possible?

Most of the processes are tree'd beneath Windows' explorer.exe, which makes sense. But there are a handful of non-system/user processes that are just "floating" free, apparently not tied to or a part of any trees.

Why are some processes in trees, while others are not, and what does this equivalently mean?

 

[devil22]

Well, I haven't exactly looked into this, but I always took it to mean, the items that start trees are the host processes, and the items in the tree branches were started by that particular host, or are hosted by it. Most user programs are hosted by explorer, because you open them with explorer (whether in the start menu/start screen, or in a explorer window navigated to some directory where the program is.) Some system processes are started by or hosted by some other system process, at times, is all.

 

[Coldblackice]

Thanks. Does this tree->branch relationship have any tangible or functional bearing on anything? Although I understand the concept, I don't really understand what the manifest relevance or purpose of trees/branches are.

Why make the distinction at all? How does it bear on anything?

 

[-Dragon-]

Primarily there for debug/troubleshooting purposes, needs to be there for development purposes and takes more work to take out than to just leave in and it has marginal use left in anyway (obviously more useful to some than others, I'm sure there are a few out there that couldn't live without it but they're a tiny minority)

 

[devil22]

Additionally, it's useful for organization, for instance, say you had multiple host processes open, and you wanted to close one/some, with the trees you are informed what sub-processes will be closed as well and in case you need them you can close the one without your desired sub-process. Helps in different situations.